Going after the politicians

Michael HillSun Staff

AMaryland United States attorney is involved in a sensitive investigation of a leading politician. The story makes it to the media. The subject denounces the probe as politically motivated. A deadline looms. Political pressure mounts.

If that sounds as if it's ripped from today's headlines about U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio's investigation of the crime-fighting office headed by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, think again. It's actually a piece of almost-30-year-old history. The U.S. attorney was George Beall. The subject of his investigation was the vice president of the United States - Spiro T. Agnew.

In the current case, DiBiagio's office has subpoenaed extensive records of the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, apparently looking for misspent federal grant money in the operation nominally run by Townsend. As political investigations in Maryland go, this appears to be very far down the scandal scale, no matter what it turns up. Indeed, most observers agree that Townsend's biggest misstep so far has been to call the investigation "political garbage."

Thus she managed to put herself in the same light as numerous public figures who have been investigated by the Maryland U.S. attorney's office down through the years, including Agnew. It is easy for those under investigation to dismiss the matter as politics because U.S. attorneys are, by nature, political creatures whose job is a political appointment made by the party that holds the White House. So people don't get picked for the post unless they carry some political baggage. But in Maryland, most agree there is a long tradition of leaving that baggage at the door when you walk into the office.

"The position is very politically charged," says Jose F. Anderson, who teaches criminal law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. "It is hard to avoid discussions about the subject because politics is involved in decisions. But by and large, going back, Maryland U.S. attorneys from both parties have walked the tightrope rather scrupulously."

In discussions with several former Maryland U.S. attorneys, it was clear that they feel a close kinship with all who have held the office, no matter from which political party, including DiBiagio.

"In Maryland, we have a great tradition in the U.S. attorney's office and there is no reason to believe that this U.S. attorney is not up to those standards," said a Democrat who once held the office who requested anonymity.

"Politically-charged cases come with the territory, whether you are looking for them or not," says Stephen H. Sachs, a Democrat who held the post in the late 1960s and went after his share of politicians. "The important thing is not to flinch, to go where the evidence takes you, and, for those so inclined, to pray."

Beall succeeded Sachs in the office. While conducting an investigation of payoffs to the county executive of Baltimore County, he learned of illicit money going to Agnew, who once held the county executive's post and was then vice president.

"It is very precarious, awkward and challenging for a federal prosecutor to be in a politically sensitive investigation, and that's probably an understatement," says Beall, whose office went after Democrats, convicting Baltimore County Executive Dale Anderson - Agnew's elected successor - and beginning the investigation of Gov. Marvin Mandel, as well as Republicans such as Agnew and Anne Arundel County Executive Joseph H. Alton Jr.

The Agnew investigation had its own political dynamics. The deadline that pushed the investigation was not a looming election but the fact that the president, Richard M. Nixon, was facing legal scrutiny in the Watergate affair. To have his potential replacement under a legal cloud seemed more than the country could bear.

In the current investigation, the political divisions are clear: Townsend is a Democrat and DiBiagio a Republican who got the job with the strong backing of Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., Townsend's likely opponent in the gubernatorial race.

Three decades ago, Beall and Agnew were both Republicans, but that did not squelch the charge of political favoritism because Beall was not Agnew's choice for the U.S. attorney's job. He had been picked by what had been the usual path for such patronage, through the recommendation of the senior Republican senator, Charles "Mac" Mathias. Agnew objected, asserting that a vice president trumped a senator in the patronage game. A deal was worked out, Beall got the job but Agnew said the investigation was motivated by lingering bitterness.

Beall first heard of the possibility of payoffs to Agnew in the spring of 1973. All remained secret until August when the Wall Street Journal broke the story.

"It is analogous to the current situation, to be sure, because two days after the Wall Street Journal carried the story, the vice president went on national television and said the charges were 'political garbage,' a term that seems to have been used by the lieutenant governor," says Beall.

Agnew had more to say, claiming he would be cleared, that political opponents were behind it all. "At that point, the hardest part for a U.S. attorney is to bite your tongue and recognize that it's the public interest that matters, not political interest," says Beall.

In October, Agnew took a deal, pleading no contest to the bribery charges and resigning his office,

Beall's words are echoed by another former U.S. attorney, Joseph D. Tydings, a man who, like Beall, came from a distinguished Maryland political family. Tydings said he kept hanging in his office a quote from a case that discussed the role of the U.S. attorney.

"I don't remember the exact wording, but it said something like the U.S. attorney is not an ordinary prosecutor or an ordinary lawyer - he is, in a unique sense, a servant of the people with responsibility to prosecute the guilty and protect the innocent with equal vigor," Tydings says. "I think the U.S. attorney in Maryland has always done that.

Tydings emphasizes that one of the great powers of the job, something few other prosecutors have, is the ability to decline to prosecute cases brought by law enforcement authorities if the U.S. attorney does not deem them worthy of taking to a judge and jury. And he makes clear his pride in refusing to prosecute some cases such as the obscenity charges postal authorities wanted to bring against a teen-age girl who had written explicit love letters to a high school teacher she had an obsessive crush on.

"Many of us consider the U.S. attorney's job the greatest job in government other than the president," he says. "It is a huge responsibility. We have a heritage in Maryland that, I think, binds all who have held the office together. Maryland U.S. attorneys are more conscious of their responsibilities than in most other states."

Tydings had his own politically delicate prosecution. As Election Day approached in 1962, he was in the process of bringing mail fraud charges against Thomas Johnson, a Democratic congressman from the Eastern Shore, along with an Alabama representative named Frank Boykin. The indictment helped hand the Eastern Shore seat to a Republican, Rogers C.B. Morton. Though both the prosecutor and the prosecuted were Democrats, that did not stop the charges of political motivation, as Tydings was seen as a new style of Democrat opposed to the conservative establishment that backed Johnson.

Maryland's Democratic Party was changing, and Tydings was on the winning side. He went on to the U.S. Senate. Beall, however, was caught in the post-Watergate problems of the Republican Party, problems that he was obviously closely associated with.

"It is still a bittersweet experience for me," Beall says of his role in bringing down Agnew, which turned out to be an ironic high point of his career in Republican politics. "I was a Republican. My father was a U.S. senator. My brother was a senator from Maryland. I had political aspirations. But after that, I guess I felt a little bit like Benedict Arnold."